Confederate holidays not appropriate

I am a white native Alabamian, with two great-great-grandfathers who fought for the Confederacy. As a state employee, I have for nearly 25 years been given holidays for Confederate Memorial Day and Jefferson Davis' birthday. While I enjoy having these days off, I would urge the Legislature to end these as state holidays.

My reasons have nothing to do with my personal opinion as to whether the Confederate dead or Jefferson Davis should be remembered. I simply believe that a state holiday should be an occasion that all the people of the state wish to celebrate, or at least acknowledge as appropriate. This is apparently not true for many, if not most, black people in Alabama, for reasons that I can understand.

Ending these holidays would not represent a collective decision that the Confederate dead and Jefferson Davis are not worthy of remembrance. It would mean only that the remembrance of them is not a matter on which all Alabamians can agree, and thus that these holidays are not appropriate for the state as a whole.Bill LittleMontgomery

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Confederate holidays not appropriate

I am a white native Alabamian, with two great-great-grandfathers who fought for the Confederacy. As a state employee, I have for nearly 25 years been given holidays for Confederate Memorial Day and

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